It is a custom in the United States and elsewhere to eat Oriental foods, such as Chinese and Japanese foods, with utensils native to that part of the world, known as chopsticks. Chopsticks are generally a matching pair of rods several inches long. Unlike Western-style utensils, such as the spoon and fork, chopsticks must be manipulated carefully by the user with one hand to grasp and carry food to the user's mouth. To accomplish this task, the user must be able to both hold the chopsticks firmly between the fingers of one hand and manipulate the chopsticks between a grasping position, where the distal ends of the chopsticks are brought together to grasp food, and an open position, where the distal ends are moved apart to release food. Thus, chopsticks work in tweezer-like fashion to grasp and hold food.
Unfortunately, the use of chopsticks requires a great deal of dexterity, making their use impossible by those without training, and often making their use undesirable by those who do not use them regularly, but who do not wish to risk the embarassment of dropping or otherwise mishandling the food they are eating. Moreover, even skilled users of chopsticks may have difficulty when eating rice, noodles and other foods, due to the tweezer-like manner in which chopsticks grasp such foods. Accordingly, those wishing to avoid embarrassment while eating often must break with Oriental custom by opting for the less-embarrassing and less enjoyable alternative of using Western-style utensils when eating Oriental cuisine.
These disadvantages are overcome by the present invention, which provides an eating utensil that, when used, resembles chopsticks, but which does not require the skilled manipulation of chopsticks. The utensil includes a pair of elongate handles that converge toward their distal ends, where they are secured to a food-engaging member, such as fork tines, a spoon or other Western-style utensil. The food-engaging member may be detachably secured to the handles, to allow replacement of the handles or the food-engaging member if any of such components should break, or to allow substitution of a variety of types of food-engaging members, such as forks or spoons, as desired.